Chalk Hills
by Jennifer Hack
Summary: The Regent Lord of Silvermoon is taken captive by the Cultist's Dr. Kohler, where he chances to meet a rather unusual rogue. Insane as she is, she may be the only one who can shed light on these events.
1. Blue Glass

Chalk Hills

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Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Summary: The Regent Lord of Silvermoon is taken captive by the Cultist's Dr. Kohler, where he chances to meet a rather unusual rogue. Insane as she is, she may be the only one who can shed light on these events.

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One: Blue Glass

(1)

"Ah, my dear Beatrice," Dr. Kohler crooned, brushing his fingers, reduced to nothing more than pearly bone, against the thick glass of the tank, it's green contents glowing faintly. "It won't be long now."

In the dimly lit prison, Lor'themar Theron sighed. He sat on the cool stone floor, his shackles ringing out in a metallic voice in the dark at his slightest movement. The Blood Elf had been locked in this subterranean prison for days, or it may have been weeks, he had no way of knowing. Surely, they had searched for him, the Regent-Lord of Silvermoon, but he could not be found.

"Soon I will return," Kohler's mouth twisted into a grin in the green light. "Soon," he turned, leaving the lifeless body of his latest sacrifice, a young Tauren, beside the green vat. The stench was unbearable.

Across that dark room, a girl lie on the floor on the cell there. She had not moved since she had been brought, and Lor'themar had presumed that she was dead. A slight movement proved him wrong, she turned her head and wiped at the bloodied corners of her mouth, prying her eyes open.

Dr. Kohler paused before this cell.

"I can see you are awake." He smiled once again. "It is time for another test."

Lor'themar looked away once he saw the doctor move to a metal panel against the wall.

"My work is never done," he lamented, touching something on the panel. The girl let out a howl of pain so loud he wondered if she was even human, to be able to make such a noise.

He vanished again, leaving the girl, or whatever was left of her shattered frame and broken mind on the floor.

Lor'themar slept. His dream took him to someplace far from the twisted laboratory that smelled of death, formaldehyde and Lanolin.

For some reason, he thought of Lordaeron, Brill and Silverpine, as they were before the Scourge twisted them into something ugly.

A loud clang woke him, faceless, formless beasts rushed the prison and forced Kohler to hide in the darker recesses of his subterranean lab.

As quickly as they had come, they vanished, taking no interest in Kohler's subjects.

"Are you alive?" it was the girl he thought had died, barely able to stand on her own, leaning heavily against the metal bars.

She pulled on the door, the broken padlock crumbled away.

He rose to face her, his rescuer, his blood enemy. His one eye regarded her warily, the other he had lost sight in the undead siege upon Silvermoon. He thrust his hands forward, raising the shackles about his wrists as if they were a question.

Her fingers twisted around the metal in the dark, working at the lock until it clicked open.

"Thank you." Lor'themar rubbed at his wrists until the marks faded.

"We don't have much time."

Lor'themar studied carefully the face of the thief, his rescuer and enemy, her dark hair, dark eyes and bruised face. There was blood, dried and cracked at her lips, the corners of her mouth.

He straightened and walked past her, tall and proud while she leaned, about to crumble. One hand was pressed firmly against her side, as if that could alleviate some of the pain.

Lor'themar understood now why his enemy might take the trouble to release him. She would never have been able to reach the surface alive, in her debilitated state.

He offered her his arm. The rogue eyed him warily, and then walked past him, refusing the offer with labored breathing and slow steps.

The place was labyrinthine and unknowable. He took a tentative step into a dark hall.

"No," She protested, digging her fingers deep into his muscular arm with all the strength she had left. "There are traps," Once she was certain he would not go forward, she released him and sunk to the floor, her fingers twitching around bits of metal and machine Lor'themar had failed to notice before.

"All right," She breathed, rising to her feet again.

Back in the prison, there was a sharp noise. The two exchanged glances and took off running down the hall. She fell more than once and he had to stop to help her up again, for now she had no strength left to even rise on her own.

"Can you make it back?" The rogue asked once they reached the exit. Lor'themar nearly laughed at her.

"The Argent Tournament Grounds are not far from here, I can take you to the Vanguard." He reached to steady her. "You need medical attention."

"I'm fine." She insisted, pushing away from him.

She fell and he caught her as she lapsed into unconsciousness, using the last of his strength to carry her across the frozen north to the tournament grounds.

"Justicar!" Lor'themar called out,

He was surrounded, suddenly. The rogue was taken from him, and placed on a cot in some corner of the tent.

The medics worked on her for hours, digging through her wounds to remove all traces of the poison from her veins. Sometimes she woke up, but despite her screams they kept working anyway.

Lor'themar watched from a distance, hypnotized and unable to look away.

When her wounds were clean and bandaged she slept, her breathing so soft and soundless.  
"Rhys Anvilmar the Insane, a SI:7 agent from Stormwind." Someone identified her, finally.  
"Anvilmar?" A medic raised an eyebrow at the name, common among dwarves, but not for a human.  
"She was raised by a dwarven family, of Menethil Harbor."  
"Ah,"  
"Apparently they raised goats. Or Rams. Whatever you call the blasted things."  
"Regent Lord?" They turned their attention to Lor'themar. "Silvermoon is in an uproar…. What has happened?"  
By the time he had told them what little he knew of the circumstances regarding his capture, he was exhausted. They let him sleep, too tired to even dream, but he thought he heard a whisper.  
"_I know you hate me, but remember that I did this for you, if you are able to bear it._"

When morning came, the girl had gone, and he was strangely glad of it. His presence was required in the Plaguelands. He had another day of rest.

(2.)

"Dr. Kohler is dead." The dark haired, dark eyed girl reported. She produced from the folds of her cloak a bundle of papers. "These are his notes." She placed them on the table before Matthias Shaw, the head of SI:7.  
"Thank you." He nodded dismissively. "The king will want to see these immediately." He knew less about Rhys Anvilmar the Insane than any of the other rogues in his employ. She had lived in the Wetlands, in a small house in the harbor there with the Dwarves she had called Mother and Father, and the dwarves she called her brothers. Four of them. Where the human girl had come from, before the salty shores of the harbor he did not know, and if she knew, she did not speak of it.  
"Your next assignment," Shaw said suddenly, as if he had forgotten. Rhys turned around and walked back to the table. Glancing at the parchment he had placed there, she frowned.  
"Darrowshire, sir?"  
"We are looking for information regarding the prince Arthas Menethil. His past, his weaknesses. As you know, this has been our first priority for some time." A pause. She nodded to show that she had been listening."You are dismissed."

(3.)

"_Little Rhys that listens to ghosts_,"

Darrowshire was a different place from what it once was - it was the sound of a little girl's laughter that brought her there, to a little house, burnt near entirely to cinders.  
"Hello! I am Pamela, what is your name?"  
Rhys blinked. In places like Darrowshire, she often had a difficult time distinguishing the real from the unreal. She told the little girl her name and waited.  
"I can't find my doll anywhere!" Pamela lamented. "Won't you help me?"  
And Rhys felt sorry for this girl, because she was dead and did not know it. "Yes. Yes of course I will." She dropped to one knee so she could better look the child in the eye, and reminded herself to smile. Such a little girl... how could she have died? "Where did you have it last?" She asked instead.  
Pamela pointed to a dark house across a sundered stone path.  
"All right." Rhys took a step forward, her heels clanging on a bit of flagstone. She did not tell Pamela to wait, because she already knew she would.  
The house was wide and draped in a shroud of silence. It was death, and Rhys could taste it, hear it.

The fireplace was covered in grey ashes, the floor cool and black.  
On the mantle piece was a bottle of bright blue glass, held shut and worn around the rim, most likely taken from a shore not too far from here.  
Rhys knew she should not have taken it, the only thing of beauty left in this house, and not the thing she had come in search of. Her pale fingers wrapped around the glass and she held it.  
"_Every night at half past eight, comes tap tap tapping_," A voice sang in a whisper.  
Rhys turned around to face the shade of a woman she did not know, frowning and worried. She pointed at something at the Rogues feet.  
There was Pamela's doll.  
She bent to retrieve it, careful not to let the glass slip from her fingers.

A scream rang through the house and in her ears, flames shot up suddenly and were everywhere, crawling up the walls and across the floor.  
Trying to remain calm, Rhys stepped backwards, the ceiling and the floor above crumbling down on her. She threw up her arms to protect her face and lunged for the door, clutching her blue-bottle prize and Pamela's doll.  
Something glared back at her from the doorway, something tall and dark with gleaming teeth. Rhys took off running through the hills, and did not stop.

The Light's Hope Chapel was a safe haven, but still a nightmare crept into Rhys' head.  
There were fires in her dream, and that pale woman.  
"_Where is my doll_?" Pamela's voice whispered, quiet and afraid.

"Fire! Fire!" Someone was screaming.  
Rhys awoke, reaching for her belt, her knives. She rushed outside, straight into a man she may have met once before.  
"You," He accused. It was not a human man, but a blood-elf that had ensnared her. And she remembered him, the one who had carried her, half dead, half alive. Not just any blood elf, the Regent-Lord of Silvermoon.  
" Lord Theron." Rhys uttered the name as his remaining eye, an unsettling viridian green bore down on her and she had to look away.  
"The Scourge approaches!" Someone called out.  
His hand flew to his blade and he pushed Rhys behind him, launching himself into the fray.

The battle passed in a frenzy, even though Lor'themar cut down many with his sword, more abominations rose from the ground to take their place.  
He turned to face his new enemy, a twisted reflection of something once human with a sharp-toothed grin and grasping claws. In a moment, they would have him.  
A whistle at his ear startled him; a throwing knife pierced the skull of his foe and it crumbled into bone-dust.  
Lor'themar turned back to see Rhys the Insane, arm still extended, her fingers just recoiling from a perfectly executed throw.

(4.)

The remains of the dead and undead were gathered and bound in oil-soaked rags and then set ablaze. The sky was growing lighter - dawn was coming.  
"Dwarven Whiskey." Rhys offered Lor'themar her flask.  
"Thank you." Lor'themar took a generous swig. And they stood like that for a while, watching the ash and cinders rise to meet the dawn.

In the morning light, Rhys inspected carefully Pamela's rag doll, and knew she had too long delayed the task of returning it.

"Regent-Lord Theron," A Horde dispatch courier saluted, tired and out of breath. He produced from the folds of his cloak a message. "From Tarren Mill."

He studied the dispatch for a moment before crumbling it between his fingers "I will leave at once."

(5.)

"Oh you've found it!" little Pamela clapped her hands. "Thank you so much! You took off running so far… I thought you would never come back."

"Pamela…" Rhys said suddenly. "Do you know where this comes from?" She asked, producing the blue bottle she had taken from the dark house.

"Yes, yes!" Her eyes glowed at the sight of it. "My father got it in Tarren Mill, from someone who brought it all the way from Gilneas! It was a present for my mother, but she isn't here anymore. Can you find her and give it back?"

Rhys nodded, looking into the blue glass. "Gilneas…" The mysterious walled city came to her mind once again, as it had a hundred times before. And Tarren Mill, where the puzzling Regent-Lord of Silvermoon was headed.

She said goodbye to Pamela, who embraced her, leaving her cold.

(6.)

The sky was dark and the moon hung high by the time Lor'themar and a handful of a few other blood elves reached his destination. Immediate action was required if Tarren Mill was to be defended from the Alliance. The Forsaken of Hillsbrad had thus far been able to fend them off, but could not last much longer.

Sylvanas' liberated undead did not like Lor'themar, but that hardly mattered. They kept this to themselves, and expressed gratitude for his aid.

"They will most likely resume their attacks at Dawn." One of them explained, speaking quite well considering the fact that he no longer had a jawbone.

When dawn came all the preparations had been made, the enemy soldiers appeared on the horizon.

Lor'themar charged into battle on his horse, a great black steed with heavy hooves that crushed his enemies, before a spear pierced his left shoulder blade and threw him to the ground.

The stout red-haired dwarf warrior responsible for his fall lunged at him. Mustering enough strength, Lor'themar raised his blade to parry the blow, a swift kick sent the dwarf reeling.

The young Dwarf lie helplessly on the ground before him. Lor'themar steadied himself for the final strike, tightening his grip on the hilt of his sword despite his shoulder-wound.

A sharp metallic sound prevented his blade from hitting its mark. He looked to see the face of the rogue they called Rhys the Insane, her dark eyes glaring with a fury.

She thrust back her head and propelled forward, their skulls clashing with a deep crack. Lor'themar fell backwards and just managed to regain his footing as she pursued him.

He struck and she met his blade with equal force. He could have fended her off, if not for his wound. She did not lunge at him again, but moved with such speed that he could not land a single blow.

Finally he pinned her against the thick bark of a dying evergreen, one that marked their proximity to the Plaguelands, their faces a mere few inches apart. He wondered if he should end her, for what she might one day become.

And what was that?

Somehow she twisted and escaped him, in a single deft movement she launched a stream of fine white sand into his eye.

Lor'themar let out a great roar and stumbled back. When the dust had cleared from his sight he searched the horizon for the rogue to find that she had vanished.

Back in the Plaguelands once more, he lie in the Argent Dawn's makeshift infirmary with a bandaged shoulder, cursing his own name for allowing her to escape.

"Lord Theron," The night elf who tended him spoke with carefully concealed venom. "There is someone who wishes to speak with you." And he left the room, as if Lor'themar had little choice in the matter. He closed his eyes, listening to the sound of carefully placed steps. The blood elf guards that stood at the entrance moved away.

He opened them again to the sight of those familiar dark eyes looking back at him. He did not know whether to welcome them or be repulsed.

"How is your shoulder?" Rhys the Insane inquired. He noticed that her forearm was bandaged and bloodied. Lor'themar wondered if he had been the cause of it.

"It is mending." He said. "Why are you here?"

"May I sit?"

"Of course." He spoke with a prescribed formality.

She sat on the old wooden chair beside his bed. "I owe you an apology of sorts. I should not have struck you."

"We are enemies, Rhys."

"But you did save my life once," She said, unfazed. "This presents an interesting problem. Among my people, this is a very serious debt, one that cannot be repaid."

"I've come to explain my actions to you." She said finally. "The man you would have killed,"

"Yes." Lor'themar remembered that Dwarf, the source of his wound.

"He is my brother. For your wound, I also must apologize – he does not know of the debt I owe you." Her face was like a mask that was impossible to read. She stood to leave, having said all she had meant to.

"Why do they call you the Insane?" He inquired. She stopped and turned around again.

"Because I am insane."

And she vanished.

(7.)

_Lor'themar Theron, blind in one eye, dreamed that he was far away from the ravaged plague lands of Lodaeron, far from Silvermoon, on a chalk-white shore of a place he had never been. Or perhaps he had, but it was so very long ago and he could no longer remember.  
A single sound, a wailing note, like that of a violin, rang out in the air thick with fog, and he walked down the beach, down into nothingness.  
He found Rhys there, standing against the grey waves. Another step forward and she would vanish, swallowed by that ocean for ever.  
Salt.  
Salt tears, transparent and grey, like the sea.  
_Should I speak?,_ he wondered. The fog surrounded them, pushing him closer to the strange girl that stood waiting on the shore.  
She regarded him with a curious look in her eyes, somewhere between the world of the real and the imaginary. He wondered what it meant._


	2. Howling

Chalk Hills

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Two: Howling

* * *

"It has been determined that the Champion Herod of the Scarlet Crusade must be eliminated, in order for our work here to continue." Bartholomew the Revered spoke in a hushed, raspy voice. "Regent-Lord Lor'themar Theron has agreed to handle this issue." Members of the Argent Dawn, and Ambassadors from the great cities sat around the table in the church at Lights Hope Chapel.

Lor'themar nodded. The plague lands as they were, already in such close proximity to Silvermoon. Any advances by the scourge or by the scarlet crusade, for that matter, could be disastrous for his people.

"The rogue, Rhys Anvilmar, has been volunteered to assist you." Bartholomew added.

Rhys the Insane. He has saved her and now could not seem to be rid of her.

They traveled through the plague lands in silence, his horse a bit more apprehensive than usual in the presence of this stranger. He did not attempt to speak with the curious rogue.

It was not until they started on the path through Sorrow Hill that Rhys dismounted and ran off the road, leaving even the ram somewhat confused.

Sighing a little, Lor'themar spurred his horse and went after her.

She wandered about the cemetery as if lost, shifting in between the shadows and graves. Sometimes, she reached out to touch them, as if they could speak. Of course, anyone who could listen to ghosts would be insane.

"Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him well." Rhys stared deep into the hallowed out eye sockets of the skull in her hands.

Lor'themar shook his head and looked away, wondering if perhaps a better assassin could have accompanied him instead.

"We should wait," Rhys decided.

"What?"

"Till half past eight, comes tap tap tapping." Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Always in riddles, poor, poor Yorick."

She placed the skull down as gently as if it were alive, and pulled a cigar from her cloak and lit it.

"That house…" She observed, walking slowly to the abandoned house situated squarely in the middle of the cemetery.

"You are Lor'themar Theron, Regent Lord of Quel Thalas."

"Yes." He admitted. This was common knowledge.

"A long time ago, before the last war, before you lost your eye, you traveled to Lordaeron, there you found a boy drowning in the lake outside of Stratholme, trapped beneath the ice, and you managed to save his life. And not a day has passed that you do not curse your own name for that boy was Arthas Menethil."

That was something fewer people knew. She stood outside the abandoned house, staring into a dark window.

"What do you mean by this?" He found his temper flaring.

"It is a difficult thing to explain… Every night at half-past eight…" She shook her head. "I can't make any sense of that song, do you know it?"

He could have shouted at her, for all her babbling madness. His remaining eye narrowed and glared; if only her features weren't so delicately formed, if her lips weren't so red…

Lor'themar nearly hit himself for thinking such things.

"Something is not right…Redpath the Corrupted… Dr. Kohler… Beatrice Redpath… Gilneas…"

"I don't understand you." He said, although he had given up hope of receiving any sort of satisfactory explanation.

Rhys held in her hands a blue bottle. She held it out before her and dropped it on the floor. Immediately falling on her knees she carefully gathered up all the pieces, and a small square parchment that had been sealed within the bottle.

"_To remind you of your home in Gilneas. Love, Joseph_."

In the distance, Lor'themar saw a faint flicker of light, torchbearers of the Scarlet Crusade

He quickly pulled Rhys to him, forcing her against the wall inside the old house, away from the window, away from the door, where they might be seen.

She smelled of some strange mixture of sea salt, flowers he couldn't name and gunpowder, but Lor'themar tried not to think of that.

He listened, but Rhys' cool breath brushed lightly against his neck and deafened him to all other sounds.

When at last they had passed the abandoned house, Lor'themar stepped away from her.

There was blood on his shoulder where she had touched him, she must have cut her hand on the glass.

"Here," Lor'themar was careful not to disturb the wound, gently pressing a small cloth bandage against it to stop the bleeding.

"Thank you." She said, her voice quavering just a little.

(2.)

Lor'themar started out at that deathly quiet forest surrounding the monastery, the moon high and pale as bone above him. He walked back to the small camp he had made slowly, the smell of cinder and smoke fresh in the air after a light rainfall.

"Rhys," She had gone, where, he did not know.

There was blood on the ground.

Lor'themar wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his blade and took off running, a howling rang in his ears, cutting through the silence.

"_Follow the girl while you can_," He thought he heard a whisper.

Something was moving in the trees, fleeing from him, the hunter; beasts knew that much. He reached for his bow.

A howling pierced the air and he turned, firing off three precise shots.

He ran after his quarry, finding the remains of a diseased wolf. This animal had not died by his hand, rather it had been mauled and ripped to shreds, fangs still bared and eyes glaring out vacantly.

He followed the trail of blood and found Rhys by the ravine, her body crumpled. Blood was dripping from her fingers and smeared across her face and neck. There was a gash in her side, though the wound was not deep, and her breathing was labored and heavy.

She stared ahead blankly at her fingers, flexing and extending them experimentally.

"Rhys," He dropped down to his knees beside her.

"I'm fine…" She heaved. "The Wolf…"

"Dead." Lor'themar placed one arm around her back and the other beneath her knees and lifted her, carrying her back to the tent.

A fever gripped her in the night, tossing and turning, some infection from the plagued animal. He wondered if she would be able to carry out her mission.

By morning the fever had passed and all that was left to do was wait for night to come again.

(3.)

The monastery was still and dark, Lor'themar waited, waited to find the mark, Herod, that Rhys was searching for.

The Regent-Lord of Silvermoon had no place on an assassination mission, but then, he had been a soldier first.

Rhys crept along the wall, steadying herself with her bandaged hand. She turned to Lor'themar when it was all right to follow her.

How easily this could all be some trap to murder him, Lor'themar wondered. A Hero of the Alliance, they would call her. He had been a Hero once, too. He stepped forward, but Rhys prevented him. Her dark eyes regarded his white, unseeing one with something that looked like fear.

Footsteps approached; hastily he ducked behind a stone column, pressing his body against hers.

Rhys let out a startled cry, muffled against his chest, and her pulse quickened instantly, as if it was not her enemy she feared, but his closeness.

The scarlet hound paused, and cast a glance at where they hid. Rhys' body seemed to relax against his, and she closed her eyes, waiting for the moment to pass.

The hound moved on, once he was certain they were save, Lor'themar stepped away, releasing the rogue.

They moved on, in the dark.

"Herod," Rhys mouthed, spying the objective, strutting about the training grounds, seemingly unguarded.

Lor'themar fitted an arrow on his bow, when Rhys placed a hand on his arm. He lowered his weapon, and for a moment, he thought her eyes shifted to a deep crimson colour. Before he could stop her, she had slipped beyond his grasp, into the courtyard with gleaming knives.

She made quick work of the Champion Herod, three strategically placed slashing wounds forced him to his knees and blood burst from his veins like a fountain, pooling on the cool stone steps of the courtyard.

It was the hound that saw her, invisible to the Crusaders' eyes, and let out loud bark. She muttered a curse as the courtyard filled with crusaders and initiates.

Lor'themar fired off six arrows in rapid succession before leaping forward to assist his accomplice. He braced his back against hers.

Rhys moved quickly, in flashes of steel, but there were too many of them, they were done for.

A blade cut across his abdomen, a minor wound, and he fought on until suddenly he was brought to the ground. '_Poison…_' He realized, blinking as the darkness of the night sky blended with the shadows overtaking his vision. He heard something, a howling.

(4.)

It was light when Lor'themar finally awoke. His entire upper body ached, his wounds had been cleaned, stitched and bound.

"Where is Rhys?" He asked when he could speak. "Does she live?"

"I'm here," She appeared breathless and frightened from the shadows. "You fell and I brought you back here. I didn't know where else to go. I- I am so sorry."

"It's all right." He said. "I'm all right."

Their assignment complete, Rhys should have left the encampment, but she prolonged her stay for days, until Lor'themar was no longer confined to his bed.

"You're leaving?" He caught her outside of the camp one night, with a lantern in her hand.

"Yes." She stopped and turned to face him.

"Where will you go?" He walked the few remaining steps to her.

"Silithus. The Frozen North. Wherever I am sent."

"That is best."

"I thought that's what you might say."

Something in her voice struck a chord in his chest.

Rhys turned to leave him, but Lor'themar reached for her, forcefully pulling her back to him. Desperately he crushed her mouth with his, her taste of something sweet and sea salt on his tongue.

Suddenly, he broke away. "Forgive me." He said in a low voice, his forehead resting ever so lightly against hers. Lor'themar didn't know what he could have possibly been thinking, to allow his feelings for this human girl to become anything other than passive non-hatred.

He released her, unable to meet her eyes again. Rhys placed a light hand on his shoulder, tilting her head upwards and slowly, gently kissed the soft place where his neck met his jaw, before disappearing into the night.

(5.)

_The nights in Quel'Thalas were cold, Rhys thought she could hear wind chimes, somewhere in the distance. She sat up in that large bed, draped in a sheer red silk net. The cloth sheet fell away from her, and she shivered. _

_"What's wrong, my love?" Lor'themar stirred beside her, and kissed her bare shoulder. _

_"I thought I heard something." She said softly. "The chimes..."_

_"Are you certain it was chimes you heard and not a ghost?" _

_"Yes, chimes." She meant to answer, but he pulled her to him, silencing her mouth with his. The steady strong sound of his heartbeat rang in her ears. They parted for a moment, she traced the thin scar that ran through his white-unseeing eye with her fingertips and kissed it. _

_'Every night at half past eight comes tap tap tapping...''_

Rhys woke up to the sound of chimes in her room at the inn in Southshore, wondering at her dream.

Slowly she rose, having slept longer than she meant to. Rhys dressed and collected the things she left scattered about the room. Anything forgotten was lost forever as she descended the stairs, determined to leave as soon as possible for Northrend.

"Miss. Anvilmar?" A gnome courier was waiting for her.

"Yes." She looked at him expectantly.

"I have something for you." He removed from his overstuffed bag an envelope bearing the seal of the Argent Dawn, and one no doubt orders from SI:7, and left the room as quickly as his short legs would carry him.

She opened the parchment sent by SI:7 first. She was expected to go and assist the gnome rogue Links Tinkgrinder in the Grizzly Hills of Northrend.

Rhys stared at the other envelope in her hands, almost afraid to open it.

There was no letter inside, only a heavy silver ring bearing the Theron family crest. As she held it in her palm, her breath became caught in her throat.

(6.)

"They're calling it the Wolfcult." Links Tinkgrinder scowled. She was a deceptively innocent-looking gnome with wide bright blue eyes and pink pigtails. They were crouched down low on a hill overlooking the Silverbrook logging camp.

"Do you think…" Rhys was intrigued.

"No. They're different." She said firmly in her high-pitched voice.

"What is the objective?"

"A rescue mission. They have one of ours." The Gnome explained. "It's simple really. I will go in at night, release him, and we'll leave."

Rhys nodded, never once taking her eyes off those humans that did not look so very different from her.

When night fell, Links Tinkgrinder crept into the camp while Rhys waited outside. The horses there, tied up and tamed by the loggers were afraid of her, nervous and edgy. But then, horses never had liked her much.

Links returned with a slouched over man, presumably the man they were sent to retrieve, unable to support him.

"Were you bitten?" He asked her.

"No." Links answered for her.

"Quickly, we'll take the horses."

Rhys took several steps back but it mattered little. The stallion he grabbed began bucking wildly at the sight of Rhys. He tried to calm it, but it was too late. The Worgen were coming.

"Get him out of here." Rhys growled. Already, she could feel her bones shifting, expanding and collapsing.

"Run." Tinks somehow managed to pull the man up onto the horse.

Bristly grey-black hairs covered Rhys' frame, rapidly morphing into a human-wolf beast.

These Worgen were smaller than her, and the first one fell easily. Rhys lunged at him, plunging her claws deep into its chest, pinning it against the wooden camp wall. She snarled at this wolf like her, and watched it as it died, fear in its amber eyes.

She ran after the horse carrying Links and the captive, eyes red with the hunger for blood, attacking any Worgen that dared pursue them. She lunged at the largest of them, ripping out his throat with her bone white teeth and howled, muzzle covered in blood.

The Worgen that saw this aggressive display of force turned and fled, leaving the path back to Amberpine Lodge clear.

But Rhys was not finished with these little-Worgen. She ran after them, leaving behind only ribbons of fur and flesh.

"Your… comrade." The captive, breathless, inquired to Links once they had reached the safety of Amberpine Lodge.

Links looked up at the moon.

Rhys stumbled back into the camp covered in blood sometime before dawn, about ready to collapse from exhaustion.

Links knew her well enough not to ask what she had done; there were dead Worgen in the forest.

Rhys coughed and sputtered, and blood burst from her mouth, but it was not her own.

"Someone help me!" Links cried out, unable to support the weight of the human girl as she fell.

Links Tinkgrinder emerged from the room in the 2nd floor of Amberpine Lodge, where Rhys slept.

"She needs rest." She announced to Lieutenant Dumont.

"What happened to her?"

"She saved us. She's a hero." Links managed to sound offended enough by the question that Dumont said nothing else.

(7.)

Once back in Silvermoon, Regent-Lord Theron found himself surrounded by a mountain of papers, signets, wax and ink, bills, laws, treaties, official correspondence. At the end of the day, he fell against the crimson bed, too tired to even dream.

But he did dream.

_A noise in the middle of the night woke him. A figure, dark and shadowy, loomed in the black recesses of his chamber. Lor'Themar reached for the pistol he kept by his side, and fired out a single shot. The stranger twisted and moved, emerging from the shadows. _

_He swore. "Rhys? What are you doing here?" _

_But she did not answer, her face a mix of emotions, relieved or anguished he did not know. She rushed to him and embraced him._

_Lor'Themar sighed, bracing a hand against her back._

"_You should not have come." He whispered. _

"_I know, I'm sorry." She pulled away. "I – I wanted to…"_

"_See you." Lor'themar finished the sentence for her, his grip around her tightened. _

_He closed his eyes in the dark as she kissed his brow, and they fell back. He was kissing her, fast, avaricious kisses, trying to hold onto her before daylight came and she would be torn from him. _

He opened his eyes as the sun filtered in through the balcony, to find his apparition vanished.


	3. Snapping Bones

Chalk Hills

* * *

Three: Snapping Bones

* * *

(1.)

_"I see... I see the Sea." Rhys whispered in a voice that was too clear to be her own, lost again on that pale grey shore that she both remembered and did not at the same time.  
"You will find us here, every night till half past eight." The shade of the ghost-woman Rhys had seen in Darrowshire stood next to her. "You will remember this place, someday, someday soon."  
Rhys blinked, and the woman had vanished. She reached for the sands at her feet, white as chalk that scratched her palms. She glanced, curiously, at the blood on her hands._

(2.)

"Look who's finally awake." Links Tinkgrinder looked up from polishing her knives as Rhys descended from the stairs, her hair still a disheveled mess from her outing the night before. And by outing, Links meant a mindless bloodthirsty killing spree.  
"What's that?" She nodded in the direction of a parchment laid across the heavy wooden table.  
"Dispatch." Links answered. "The Argent Dawn is requesting our assistance. Again."

(3.)

"Imagine them bringing us all the way out here just to interrogate a prisoner."  
In the dimly lit room, the Cultist could barely make out the two figures that stood before him. One was most definitely a Gnome, it was her high pitched voice he heard, the other stood too deep in the shadows to be discerned.  
"I'll tell you nothing!" The cultist bellowed, struggling in vain against the cast iron shackles that held him firmly to the thick wall of wood and stone."The Litch King will-" but something grasped his throat and silenced him.  
His vision cleared enough to make out a set of eyes, crimson blood-red and bone white teeth.  
"_You...will.... tell..._" The worgen's voice was grating. "_Everything." _A flash of a talon sent the cultist into a fit of panicked screaming, his dismembered ear fell to the ground.  
"What are your plans for the Valley of Lost Hope?" Links stood up, her squeaky voice almost intimidating. "Why are the cultists still stationed there?"  
"You will all be raised as mindless servants of the Litch King!"  
"Rhys,"  
The worgen snarled and snapped back one of the cultists fingers.  
"We were ordered too!" The cultist bit back tears of pain.  
"Obviously." Links was tired of this game.  
Rhys twisted the mans middle and forefingers until they cracked and bent.  
"We were ordered to intercept horde forces... the Blood Elf Regent-Lord is leading them!"  
The worgen paused for a moment to look back at her smaller companion. _"True?_" She asked in a voice that was unidentifiable as human.  
"Yes, he's telling the truth." Links ascertained after a careful study of his expression.  
Rhys flexed her claws.  
"No," Links said. "You can't kill him. Not yet."  
The Worgen placed its large paws on either of the prisoners shoulders and roared in his face as loud as she could, before rushing out the door.  
"Where are you going?"  
But she did not answer.

(4.)

Lor'themar braced himself against the ice and rock. He was quite surrounded. Briefly, he scanned the horizon with his good eye, finding most of his men dead or dying. They had been routed, utterly.

He raised his sword to parry the incoming blow, but it did not come.

A human-wolf monster had grasped the arm of his assailant, wild-eyed and snarling, grey-black hair bristling. It's other reticulated talon plunged through the chest of the cultist, cherry red blood falling on the snow and blossoming, like a flower.

With a flash of teeth and claw it slammed the other against the rocky wall splintering bits of bone against the ice.

It whirled on the third, the one that attempted to flee, but the Worgen was faster. It's fangs closed around the man's skull with a sickening crunch and he fell.

In the distance, Lor'themar saw the ranger fitting an arrow into his bow, and held a hand to stay the attack too late.

It flew, whistleing through the frosty air hitting its mark against the Worgens' spine. It let out a howl of pain and grasped at the ice as if that would absorb the pain. A second arrow pierced it's chest and blood burst from it's mouth, some of it belonging to the beast, some belonging to the men who had tried to kill him.

"No!" His voice rang out.

It regarded Lor'themar with a curious pleading stare, and he could do nothing but watch before a third arrow struck, and the beast let out a long wail, running into the mountains like the wounded animal it was.

He ran after it, finding bits of blood and broken arrows as he went, before coming at last to a muddied ditch, a trap laid for some unsuspecting solider.

Worgen no longer, it was the form of that beautiful dark-haired, dark-eyed girl that he thought he loved, once, waiting to die.

Her breath came in short bursts when she wasn't coughing up red-black blood. Her hair was strewn about her, soaked in the pool of crimson at her side.

Effortlessly, he slid down into the ditch beside her.

"Gilneas…" She managed to speak, somehow. "It all goes back… to Gilneas."

"Rhys," he spoke, but she couldn't bear to look at him now, now that he knew what she was.

"I… will not die." She said. "Go, now."

But Lor'themar did not go. He unclasped his cloak and wrapped her in it, taking her in his arms as he had once before. "Help me." He urged, and she pressed her bloodied palms against his back and he carried her.

(4.)

Rhys awoke in a room she did not know, her back covered in bandages and tattoos in a dwarven language Lor'themar had been unable to understand.

She turned to find the Regent-Lord asleep at her side, her eyes filled with tears at the thought that he hadn't abandoned her.

He stirred from his sleep at the sound, and asked her what was wrong, but she would not speak.

"You are in Dalaran, the 2nd floor of the Legerdemain." He explained. She nodded to show that she had heard him.

Lor'themar wanted to reach for her, but she looked so fragile lying there he thought that she might break with even the slightest touch.

She placed her cool hand on his forearm and a sigh escaped from him. Gently, Lor'themar rested his smooth palm over hers and waited as she slept again, in love with a curse.

As she slept she spoke words in a language he did not understand, words that echoed against a thousand years of stone and white chalk hills.

(5.)

_On that shore again, Rhys lingered between the world of the real and the unreal. She stood to meet the waves, lapping at her feet.  
"I knew you would find me here again!" Pamela sat beside her, legs sprawled out in front of her. "But you mustn't go out too far, or my mother says you can get dragged a thousand miles down, and never come out again! My mother wanted me to tell you that there's something you have to remember, too, something that happened a long time ago. It's okay if you don't right now- sometimes I have a hard time remembering things too."  
_  
"Rhys, wake up." She felt herself being pulled up, away from her dreams of a bottomless grey ocean. There were screams outside.  
"What has happened?" Rhys heard herself asking, but her voice sounded faint and distant even to her own ears.  
"It's the Scourge- the Undead have overrun the city. We must evacuate."  
She reached for her things, a belt of knives and a vial of poisons, before trying to stand. Lor'themar offered his arm to assist her, but she would not take it.

Krasus' Landing had been closed off to contain the scourge there, Lor'themar rushed to the mage that could whisk them away to the forest below the floating city.  
Rhys stepped away from the mage that would have brought them to safety, bearing an instinctive aversion to magic that she had carried with her all her life.  
"We must go," Lor'themar urged her, but she bristled at his touch. He grabbed her anyway, holding her tightly to him. Her scream rang in his ears and they floated in the ether, down to the forest below.

Rhys pushed away from him immediately and fell on her knees, overcome by a sudden sickness, expelling whatever bile and blood was left in her.  
"It's not safe here, " Lor'themar had dropped to a knee beside her, speaking gently.  
She managed to stand, refusing his help once again, and they walked.

They stopped to rest in the ruins of what was once a great monument, Lor'themar concerned for the wounds Rhys carried.

"No one was ever meant to know, about me." She said, finally. "Except Links, the only other Rogue I have ever worked with."  
"How did it happen?" The question had been burning at his mind.  
"I don't know." Rhys answered. "I have been this way, ever since I can remember." Even now, she would not look at him, ashamed of what she was.

He reached for her with a steady hand, her cool skin smooth against his fingertips. He kissed the bruised cheek, her cracked lip. They fell back, a tangled mess of arms and limbs, whisked from Dalaran. The fire was dying, but Lor'themar would not tend it, now that he held her.

Suddenly he stopped and pulled away.

Lor'themar thought of his people, his home, and she would not be welcome there. Should their closeness be discovered, his leadership would be questioned, Rhys executed to punish him.

"I can't."

Beneath him, Rhys trembled. "Is it so awful, being what I am?"

"Do you think it to be as simple as that?" Lor'themar moved away from her, desperately needing the distance between them. "Do you think I don't want to touch you, kiss you, make love to you?"

She looked away, the eyes he loved filled with melancholy and regret. Rhys stood and walked to the edge of the ruins. She was exhausted, but she would not sleep, not now, staring up at the distant stars, trying to remember a pale grey shore from years and years ago. When morning came Lor'themar searched, but all traces of her had vanished.

(6.)

Rhys laughed often to herself when she was alone, about things that were both humorous and not. Northrend was filled with ghosts and their whispers.

Lor'themar was safe, asleep, for now. She trembled at the thought of his touch, his restraint.

"Have you gotten into the trash again?" Links Tinkgrinder was waiting for her at the Argent Vanguard. "The Horde has received a report of some wolf-monster that nearly killed the blood-elf regent lord."

"I wasn't trying to kill him." Rhys gazed forlornly back on the path she had tread, having left him somewhere behind her.

"Of course you weren't." Links sighed, for there was no monster that possessed a greater loyalty than a wolf. "That's what I was afraid of."


	4. The Pale Shore

Chalk Hills

* * *

WTB Reviews. PST.

* * *

Four: The Pale Shore

(1.)

They were always struggling to maintain the Vanguard from the Scourge, but that night, the air was still.

Rhys the Insane had already lost herself in several bottles of whiskey, trying to remember something from long ago, only the memories slipped through her fingers like water.

"Here," Links Tinkgrinder sat beside her, a flask in one hand, the other handing her a cigar.

"Thank you." Rhys fell back against the snow, looking at the distant celestial spheres. "Now you've cut the flute from the throat of the loon. When chickens get a taste, when he sucks you deep... sometimes you're nothing but meat. ."

"What are you on about this time?" Links asked.

"I don't know. I never know." Rhys fell back against the ice and snow, warm and dizzy from the whiskey.

"Avenger Metz." Links stood suddenly, but that did not make her appear any taller.

"Which one of you is the Worgen?" He snapped, a cigar burning to ash on his lips.

Rhys stood slowly.

"I don't have time to sit around and play 'guess the smell' with you, wolf." He shoved a sealed envelope at her. "We want you to assassinate Brigitte Abbendis. Bring back her head."

(2.)

Lor'themar returned, a small entourage of rangers accompanying him, but the ravin he sought was nowhere to be found.

She was far away from where he was, standing alone on the cliffs above New Hearthglen, seeking a prey of her own. "Bring back her head." The request had angered her, no one had ever sought confirmation of the terrible violence she was capable of.

"_Bridgitte Abbendis began her descent into madness long ago, before even the death of her father." _The voice of a time-lost ghost whispered in her ear, barely audible against the sound of the howling wind.

"I have no father." She murmured to no one. "No mother. I was not born but carved out of a thousand years of solitude and a stream of water, like the oceans and mountains."

"_Ah, but no, you were born, as I was born once." _The voice seemed to be laughing at her. "_Then died, and lived again, to die again._"

"You were one of Sylvanas Windrunners Forsaken."

"_But now I am not. They sent assassins to have me killed for being captured here. But Abbendis hates your kind just as much as she hated what I once was._"

And then the ghost vanished, or perhaps he simply had nothing else to say. A howling rang out against the frozen wastes as the worgen descended, silently, remaining veiled in shadows and careful to avoid the lamplight.

Rhys could smell the blood still on the ground, caked and dried. Some who had died here were deserving, some were not.

The horses in the stable cried out at her approach, but their pleas were soft and no one heard them.

High General Abbendis slept while priests, clerics and guards roamed the hallways, looking for someone like her.

The window was wide and open, it had been easy to climb inside without disturbing the stained glass shutter. She looked down on this woman, responsible for the deaths of many, and wondered at this monster who was not cursed, not animal or barbarian, like her; but a monster all the same.

She stirred, the wind had crept into her chamber through the open window, and Rhys hid herself. The high general rose and snapped the glass tightly shut.

"Who's there?" Bridgitte Abbendis demanded.

Rhys burst from the shadows, her claws forming three perfect even lines across her neck as blood poured from them.

She fell against Rhys' lupine arms and she lowered her victim to the floor silently.

"_The voice whispered, "Come to me." From the very beginning I knew that it was the Holy Light speaking to me in dreams. At last! After all of my years of prayers and good deeds, the cleansing of the blight of the ampaign from the face of Azeroth. After all of the failures and resurrections…" _Abbendis' words rang out in the dark, deaf to all other ears.

Rhys came to focus on a small book on the Generals writing desk.

"_Day 6 of the Gilnean campaign,_" Abbendis' voice whispered to her. "_It appears that the plague of Worgen can be traced back to a single individual, they claim from the house of Greymane…"_

A knock at the door.

"General! We heard you shout, Ma'am."

Rhys lept for the window, but then suddenly remembering that Avenger Metz had requested the generals head, bend her neck to the floor and quickly snapped her jaws shut, before disappearing.

(3.)

"Captain Kendall and his forces are fighting in the court of bones beneath Icecrown citadel, with any luck, we should be able to locate and exploit an opening." Avenger Metz sat and the end of a long table at the Tournament grounds, and Lor'Themar Theron sat there, unable to escape the glare of Varian Wrynn, King of Stormwind. There were many persons of note at that table, Warchief Thrall, Jaina Proudmoore and members of both the Ebon Blade and the Argent Crusade, but it was Lor'themar that Wrynn had determined to be the traitor.

Someone had entered the tent, and all of them turned.

Rhys was covered in what appeared to be mud splatter, only it gave off the metallic smell of blood. She did not regard him, the Regent-Lord of Silvermoon.

"Yes?" Avenger Metz looked at her expectantly.

In an almost graceful movement, she tossed a round object onto the table. Lady Jaina gasped in horror and stood once she realized what it was, or what it once had been. A human head, perhaps that of a woman, badly mangled and covered in what appeared to be teeth marks.

Rhys' eyes were narrowed into a glare. "Is there anything else you require?"

After a moment of silence she turned and left, the war chief smirking in approval.

(4.)

"That wasn't terribly smart you know." Links Tinkgrinder said later, as they watched the waves lapping against the cliffs, far below the tournament.

"I do not like him." Her voice was distant, her thoughts somewhere else. "Something has happened in Gilneas." She said. "Something terrible."

"The Val'kyr are attacking!"

Rhys and Links turned to see the deathly white Angelic figures above them. Were they cursed to look like ghosts?  
Links ran from them, but Rhys was mesmerized by their translucency, beautiful monsters, as opposed to barbarous ones.

She fell, not knowing what had happened, perhaps an explosion, perhaps something else, bound for the icy waters and rocks below.

Links was screaming something, but Rhys could not hear her over the sound of the rushing wind.

It was not the ice and rocks that she fell against but something softer, warmer. A hippogriph's screech rang out and she knew what had saved her. She clung to the horse-bird beast as it carried her back, up and up to the grounds, now silent.

Her feet had touched the ground, but the beast still kept its eyes on her, firmly and intently, as if trying to determine what she was.

There were elves, many of them, dressed in red and gold.

Rhys pushed along the rows of enemy soldiers, still in solemn silence as Lor'themar was carried, bandaged and bleeding. It was enough to make her wish she had fallen farther, fallen faster.

(5.)

She crept into the tent where he rested late at night and lie beside him with salt tears as she buried her face between his neck and his shoulder.  
"I shouldn't have left you." She whispered.  
"Rhys," He stirred, but his embrace was weak. "You shouldn't have come." but somehow he held her there. "Stay." His voice was a whisper.

He felt her lips brush against his face and turned his head. He kissed her weakly on the mouth, but it was just as sweet, just as salty. Lor'themar reached to touch her, her skin, her dark hair.

So she stayed, and when he awoke, she had gone; the smell of sea salt, and flowers he couldn't name still lingering in the air about him.

He searched for her, when he could, but she was nowhere.

(6.)

"You sent her to die." Links glared, furious.

"I sent her to assist Captain Kendall." Avenger Metz and the death knight Thassarian stood stone-faced against the allegation.

"Who blew her up with a stack of saronite bombs! " She accused, her voice growling louder, angrier. "You killed her."  
"Her temperament was fickle and violent!" Metz slammed his fist down on the heavy wooden table. "Worgen have no allegiances, no loyalty!"  
"You had NO right." Links spit on the ground, and stormed out with all the force her small body could muster.

She walked quickly and deliberately to the red sunreaver pavilion.

'I can't believe I'm doing this...' Links muttered, a small, defiant pink blur against a hundred tall and perfect figures.  
"I... respectfully request an audience with Regent-Lord Lor'themar Theron." She demanded in a squeak, tossing to the ground a small array of knives, axes and projectile weaponry.

"What is this regarding?" The tallest of them, an Arcanist peered down at her with a raised eyebrow, his expression both amused and curious.

"Regarding…" Links fumbled in her pocket for the ring, the Theron family crest, all that they had been able to recover of her. "Regarding this." She held it up to him, and he quickly snatched it away to inspect it.

"Very well." The Arcanist returned it to her. "I will arrange it at once."

"She is not dead." Lor'themar held the ring delicately between his fingers, something he had given to her once, now all that was left of her.

"They sent her there, knowing that she would die." Links said.

He remembered her body pressed against his before he pulled away and sighed, not wanting to look at the gnome as she spoke. He listened as the world became a quieter place.

(7.)

Rhys had fallen farther, fallen faster, but the explosion had not killed her.

"_Ah… my dear Beatrice_." Dr. Kohler had crooned into the glass.

Beatrice… Beatrice Redpath. The woman who came from Gilneas. Pamela.

_There was something glimmering in that abyss, Rhys reached out to touch it, only to suddenly recoil in pain, _

_And in that pain was a memory…_

_The pale shore that bordered the Gilnean isle stretched out for miles and miles.  
A little girl, thinner, paler and more sickly than she ought to be, no older than twelve, had been sent there.  
No, she had not been sent.  
They were getting sick, a horrible curse that infected to the bone. She had been sick too, and the moonlight and blood lust would soon take her, as it had taken others.  
What had her name been, then?  
It didn't matter.  
Her mother, a tall, beautiful woman whose fingers were always cool to the touch, had come to her in the night, with tears of anguish and sorrow.  
"My darling, my little girl," She pressed her lips against her forehead and kissed it, then left her cold and alone in a dark room with a silver knife beside her.  
She took it and went down to that shore, as she knew she should, just as the dawn was breaking behind those grey clouds; it had begun to rain again.  
Others came that were cursed, as she was, some waded far out into the ocean and tried to swim to the bottom, others stood in the surf, cutting their own throats so that the blood seeped through in ribbons, but the waves and sand and fog took them all.  
They did this for their families, not wanting to bring them pain or dishonor by turning into monsters.  
The knife in her hand weighed more than anything else she had ever carried. The waves rushed to the shore and made her dizzy. It fell, cutting her palms till there was blood on her hands and she walked, farther and farther away from home and into the sea, disappearing into the rain and fog.  
But she did not die.  
Instead she awoke on a newer, distant shore._

"You shouldn't have done that." A child's voice rang in her ears.

Rhys emerged from the pool, miles and miles underground, and saw the boy standing there.  
"I am Matthias Lehner." The ghost-child spoke. "That belonged to him, he threw it down here, thinking no one would ever find it. He said it made him weak, but you've discovered it, and now he will be after you."  
"What?"  
"You have seen his weaknesses, seen me."  
"I see ghosts all the time," Rhys was dazed, confused, unable to recognize the sound of her own voice. "I don't know how you come to me or why, or why even you cannot give me answers...I have looked everywhere..." She fell to her knees.  
"I know that I am not living." Matthias Lehner placed his ghostly pale hand on her shoulder. "But if you do not flee, you will not be living much longer, either. There is a way to the surface..."  
"They sent me here, expecting me to die, for the monster that I am."  
"Try to remember, remember where it is you are supposed to go, now. The answer must be a simple one."  
"Gilneas... it always goes back to Gilneas. I was born there, I think, if I ever was born anywhere."  
"Then you must go there. You will find me again, there is much I have to show you..." He stepped aside, revealing a portal to the surface of that icy barren wasteland from which she had fallen.  
Rhys felt her body twitching, averse to the arcane energies that allowed that portal to exist.  
"You must go..."  
"I cannot."  
"You must."  
Biting her lip, she reached for it, and then felt herself falling again, up and up and up and up.

She fell hard against the ice, gasping for the frozen air that made her lungs burn.  
"_Run..._" the voice reached her, and she forced herself to her feet, obscuring her face with the heavy black cloak and hood she wore. She ran until her form and bones shifted, and she could run farther, faster.


	5. Dead Things

Chalk Hills

* * *

Five: Dead Things

(1.)

The boat had stopped in Menethil harbor, but Rhys stayed hidden until nightfall and crept, unnoticed through the place she had lived for so long. She lingered by one window, where a stout but kind-hearted dwarven woman lived with her husband and four sons and sighed.

She was not laughing as Rhys remembered, instead she sat in tears, a letter on the table bearing the seal of the Silver Hand, announcing that Rhys Anvilmar had died.

She wanted to go to her, to tell her not to cry, but there was no time. She must reach the Greymane wall before sunrise.

Rhys ran across the marsh, the highlands and into the foothills, into Silverpine where the undead lurked until she came to the Greymane wall, tall and looming.

In her desperation she pounded on the doors, but there was no one, no answer. She wondered if there was even anything alive in Gilneas, still.

The wolf she was howled at the gates before scaling the wall, dropping into the dark, eerie and quiet city below.

Rhys the human girl walked the streets there, empty, until she came at last to the great fortress of wood, the Greymane Manor.

A man sat, alone in that great hall, brooding. Rhys knew him instantly.

"Martina." The man who had been her father once stared at her, emotionless and stone-faced. "Lazarus, come back from the dead."

"Where is my mother?"

"Gone."

"The waves?"

"Yes." He paused, unable to look at her any more. "You were lost to the waves too, for a time. Lot of good it did." Genn Greymane looked down at his scarred hand, reminded of that which afflicted him as well. "We are all cursed now." He turned his back to her. "But you have returned."

"Yes."

"I am glad of it."

"They sent me to die." Rhys said, with no particular emotion. "Why , I do not know, but I assumed it was for me being what I am."

"There is nowhere for any of us to go. Not anymore." Her father sighed. "Here you will find refuge, but no solace."

She bowed, but he did not turn around, then left the great hall.

Rhys wandered the great wooden palace, the walls echoing with voices and memories from her life before.

She wandered until she came to a door, firmly locked with the words 'Hermetically Sealed' posted in bright, red letters.

"These were your rooms."

"Liam." Rhys turned to regard the young, tired-looking young man with wild eyes that looked like her, the brother she had lost when she walked into the ocean.

"Mother paused here, every day for fourteen days and prayed that your soul would not be condemned for eternity."

"What happened on the fifteenth day?"

"She killed herself." He pressed his hand against the door."Our father says that she threw herself into the sea, as you had done, having become infected herself, but that is not so. Mother never suffered from the curse of Worgen."

Liam pointed farther down the dimly lit hall. "Come," He said, and Rhys followed him. "You were one of the first to become sick when they came, if not the first." He said, somehow aware that she had lost her memory.

"How did it happen?"

"You threw yourself at one of them like an animal and managed to kill it, so that I would be spared. I have not forgotten."

Rhys thought of the three deep scars on her back.

"You were in a fever for days, spouting things, nonsense and secrets that no one could know but the dead."

They walked the length of the hall until they came to the courtyard, and beyond it, the cemetery. Liam paused before two stones, larger and more ornate than the others.

"You and mother were buried here."

'_Martina Greymane'_

Liam turned to leave again, but stopped when Rhys did not follow.

"I think... I would like to stay here for a little while."

There was a rumbling in the sky above them and it began to rain.

At night she slept soundly, comforted by the familiar walls of the wood palace, but woke just before dawn.

She wandered to the pale shore, the place she remembered from dreams, and gazed out at the ocean, endless and vast.

"Martina, will you leave again?" Liam asked, having followed her there.

"No." Rhys watched the sky grow lighter, echoes and memories of her mother's cello called to her from the chalk white hills, the hills that were all she knew. "I cannot."

She went to that shore, often and alone, when it was still dark, a lantern in her hand.

The people of Gilneas whispered that their Princess, Martina, had returned; cursed but alive like them. No one knew what she thought of, watching the tides ebb and flow, some said she thought of a man who loved her, once.

The church bells rang at dawn, and Rhys vanished, only to return to that place when darkness fell, waiting for nothing.

(2.)

After the death of Rhys Anvilmar, Lor'themar was called back to Silvermoon to deal with the scourge threat present there, while the Argent Dawn planned with the Knights of the Ebon Blade their entry into Icecrown Citadel.

Lor'themar stood at his conference table, his advisors and Generals rallied about him as they planned their cities defense.

"The forsaken are unable to assist us."

"Why is that?" Lor'themar asked.

"They are otherwise occupied," The Ranger's index finger drifted to the kingdom on the map that had been closed off from the world for many years. "Assaulting the walled Kingdom of Gilneas."

"Very well," Lor'themar turned his attention back to the section of the map that was the city of Silvermoon. "We are more than capable of handling this situation ourselves."

(3.)

"You paladins, all of you, self-righteous, pompous asses!" Genn Greymane roared as Rhys lingered in the doorway to the great hall, veiled in shadow, while Liam stood at his right.

The paladin, one she knew as Avenger Metz, and others Knights of the Silver Hand, remained unmoved by her father's outburst.

"The Litch King and the scourge are a threat to us all!" Avenger Metz began his plea again. "And you must ally yourself with us if you wish to drive the Forsaken out of Gilneas."

Rhys crossed the room, carefully and slowly. She locked eyes with the man who had ordered her death.

"Lady Martina," There was a reverent murmur through the small audience of Councilors at her rare appearance.

"Get out." The hall rang with the sound of her voice.

And they left.

"We will go to Duskhaven immediately and lead the charge against the Forsaken." Liam spoke with a voice of great urgency and importance.

Genn Greymane nodded in approval and Rhys left to collect her armor, her knives.

Whatever Sylvanas's liberated undead were expecting behind the Greymane wall, it was not the frenzied rush and snarling of savage wolves.

(4.)

"The forsaken have made a request for your Aid in Gilneas, regent-Lord."

Standing alone on the front line, Lor'themar Theron cursed. Their enemy had been beaten back after four days and four nights of fighting. His men were tired, injured, and there was blood on his hands.

"They experienced some difficulty in their campaign."

(5.)

Gilneas was silent again, the Forsaken had been driven back, for now.

"God knows I've thrown away those graces." Rhys closed her eyes as she stood on the pale shore she knew so well. "Lor'themar, I am not dead." She spoke aloud in pleading, hoping her words would reach his ears in a whisper.

Every night at half past eight, she went to the cemetery, to the grave marked 'Ophelia Greymane' the woman who could not bear her own sorrows and drowned them, but among the thousands of ghosts she had heard, her mother's she could not.

"You are Martina." They said as she went one night to the house where her mother lived before she became her father's wife.

Her grandfather lived no longer, whether he drowned himself in the sea or was one of those executed for becoming Worgen, she did not know, but the glass shop still stood, under a thin layer of dust.

'_Can you tell me the story about the Rabbits and the Berry Jam? That story is so funny!_' A memory of a child's laughter echoed.

It smelled of cedar and turpentine and ash, and there, lined up neatly against the dusty window were bottles made of blue, blue glass. And on that dusty window was a verse etched in glass; "_For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean'_."

(6.)

The Elves and the Undead were gathering just outside the wall. Cloaked in shadows and the guise of a wolf, Rhys perched high above them, and watched as they readied their cannons, their catapults and machines of war.

The Sin'Dorei as they called themselves now had suffered much, as had the Worgen, but while they suffered from an addiction Rhys couldn't understand, they had not thrown their children, their mothers, their sisters to the sea, she closed her eyes and listened as the waves fell against the shore, rising and falling like a breath.

Lor'themar's devotion to his people and his allies was great, but he must not come through the wall.

Rhys wanted to go to him, the man who believed her to be dead and show him that pale shore she knew from dreams, the church, where she and her mother had been buried but she had came back, like Lazarus, from the dead.

Far below, Lor'themar looked up as a howl pierced the night.

"Wolves, they said." A ranger looked up at the dark sky. "They eat the food of wickedness and drink the wine of violence."


	6. Beatrice

Chalk Hills

* * *

Six: Beatrice

(1.)

"I must fight," Rhys spoke aloud to herself, as she stood against the wall. Liam, her brother, had gone somewhere else. "I must not fight." As she counted, one, two, three, the number of rosary beads crafted out of blue, blue glass.

To join the alliance against the forsaken would force them to flee. That was what must be done.

"They will keep attacking until you fall," The Druid, Gracina Spiritmight, sent from Darnassus, spoke softly with a peculiar reverence for the wolves whose company she was in. She was not like the others, those paladins her father so despised.

"We will not fall." Liam said firmly.

"I have come to beg your aid then, for us, for the alliance."

"For them, who sent one of their own to die like a dog!" Genn Greymane pointed at Rhys, his daughter Martina, with a shaking, trembling hand.

She thought of Menethil Harbor, where she had lived, and the dwarves she had known for so long. "We all die like dogs, father." Rhys paused. "I would… encourage you to consider this proposition."

"I will send you then," The man that was her father replied. "As our ambassador to the Alliance." Whether this was a punishment or an honor she did not know.

"We will leave in the morning, then." The Druid bowed.

"Yes."

(2.)

Rhys left the hall, and went to that chapel where she and her mother were buried. In that chapel was a book with numbered passages.

She went to the one, and half past eight, and there it read;

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone."

"Who was Beatrice?" Rhys asked aloud.

"Mother was not from a wealthy family." Liam answered from the shadows, having followed her there. "Her father was a glass blower. Beatrice Kohler was her sister. She married a man named Joseph long ago, and never returned to Gilneas."

"She is dead now." Rhys said.

"I know."

Pamela… Pamela was dead, too.

(3.)

It was early in the morning when the ship left, the air was thick with fog and salt.

"Who is she?"

"She is the Princess, Martina."

Rhys heard the druids whispering, but she did not listen.

They went to the King of Stormwind, a deep grey-black hood covering her face like a shroud, her red, red lips her only distinguishing feature, and they did not recognize her.

She did not stay in Stormwind long, and she did not sleep. Rhys wandered through the Gardens, the empty streets, until she came to that Grand Cathedral, the monument to the light, an unshapable, unnamable entity that was a mere shadow. In Gilneas, they lived in grey shadows, and God no longer saw them.

"We go again, to Northrend. The Litch King must fall, and the Horde is willing to forge a truce of sorts to that end."

Rhys stood at the window, away from the others, rulers and ambassadors of the Great Cities, and merely nodded.

A letter from her brother had told her that the Elves and Forsaken had abandoned the wall, under the threat of the Alliance, and the occurrences in Northrend.

(4.)

"Look at me again and I will kill you." Rhys growled in response to Avenger Metz's presence, but she did not turn around.

She stood at the grave of the man they called 'The Black Knight', if he came not from Westfall, where had he lived before?

"You are late." Metz nonetheless averted his eyes.

"My presence is not required."

"No, it isn't." Metz admitted.

"They only know me as I was, and I am dead."

She returned again, in the dark, to the grave of the Black Knight.

"He will not speak to you." The Ghost-child, Mathias Lehner, spoke. "He is not there."

"Yes."

"The Doctor has made him live again."

"Those experiments," Rhys averted her eyes, remembering how she had been brought alive but barely, to the subterranean laboratory belonging to Dr. Kohler. "But he cannot make Beatrice live again, not the way she was."

"No."

"Who is he?"

"He was corrupted, long ago. His memory of things he knew was valuable to _him_." The child paused. "And you cannot go."

She stood there not knowing how much time had passed, waiting, waiting for nothing. A meeting that called for a discussion of tactics called her away from the grave with the morning light.

"Rhys," The Regent-Lord Lor'themar Theron regarded her curiously, and she had no way of knowing what it meant.

"May I introduce Martina Greymane, Princess of Gilneas." Gracina Spiritmight spoke the name with a venom, directed only at her enemy.

He fell to his knees before her, with an unexpected reverence. She wished she could fall, to sink to him, but present company forbade her do such a thing.

He kissed her hand lightly, and with a shaking hand she reached to touch him, that thin scar that ran across his unseeing eye.

(5.)

The Frozen sea was so great and vast, Lor'themar felt he could drown in looking on it. When night fell he returned to his own tent, busying himself with things that needed to be signed, dated and sealed. There was a noise, somewhere outside, and he turned.

He had known that Rhys lived, but now she stood before him, her eyes, glazed and tired. She ran to him, and he embraced her. His hands traced a line down her back and she bent.

A cry escaped her, as she clung to him.

"I am Lazarus, come back from the dead," She murmured, against his chest.

He kissed her, frantically, avariciously, and they fell back tangled.

She touched the scar against his eye, the one that had been lost long ago, against a battle with the undead.

Lor'themar moved with her, against her, inside of her, her palms pressed against his back, still cool. She cried out in pain, having known no other touch but his, being the monster that she was.

When he had finished, he looked at the face of the thing he loved and kissed it, their sin complete.

He woke earlier than usual, before the light of dawn pierced the frozen wasteland that surrounded them.

In his bed Rhys still slept, and carefully he untangled himself from her.

He breathed her name and she stirred.

"Is it early? Is it late?"

"Early, still." His smooth palms drifted from her face to her neck, stained with a blue-black mark he had left there in his zeal.

"I should go," She said, closing her eyes again, relaxed by his touch.

"Stay," He pleaded, even though he knew the dawn would take her from him.

"I want to," Rhys opened her eyes again, looking up at him, and reached for his hand, resting at her neck. "But I cannot."

(6.)

"Yeah, I'm not calling you that." Links Tinkgrinder scoffed at the name 'Martina' and Rhys laughed. "They've started moving into Icecrown Citadel, the explosion…" She paused. "The explosion was all they needed to create an opening. But I suppose they told you that."

"Yes," Rhys admitted.

"They're sending me." Tinks said, her mouth firmly shut in determined concentration as she sharpened her knives. "Will you go?"

'_You cannot go," _Matthias Lehner's voice rang in her ear, like the chiming of bells.

"Yes." Rhys said anyway.

(7.)

"You're here, again." Lor'themar found her, standing at the grave of the Black Knight, lost in the snowfall.

"I don't know who he was, but he was someone." Rhys frowned.

"We were all someone else, once."

"Kohler was a glass-blower."

"How do you know?"

"He was my Grandfather. His daughter Beatrice died in Darrowshire." Lor'themar moved closer to her, she could feel his breath, steaming and hot against the back of her neck. She longed for him to touch her, as he had before. "I had… to go all the way back to Gilneas, just to remember." She relaxed against him impulsively. "He held a power over them, my family. If he was afraid of them or not I cannot know." She shivered as the snow fell in flurries about them, and Lor'themar's held her.

"Stay with me tonight." He whispered.

"Yes."

She had a dream that night, as she lie against his chest, lulled to sleep by the rhythmic sound of his heartbeat.

Still awake, Lor'themar traced his fingers across her spine, tattoos in a dwarven language he did not know, memorizing every inch of her.

"_There you are!" Pamela ran to Rhys, as she stood on that pale shore, and embraced her, but as soon as she touched her, the shore flooded with waves that came and drowned her, the little girl vanished, and she was somewhere else. _

"_Mother," The child had called her. "Mama." _

_Rhys stood on the balcony overlooking the city of red and gold. _

_He was small still, this half-elf child, with little pale fingers and smooth features. He reached for her, and she held him, delicately, carefully, so as not to break this fragile thing. _

"_Where is father?" He asked._

"_I do not know," Rhys held the child and looked down at the city below, searching for him. Something was happening down there, something terrible. _

Rhys bolted upright, shaking. She felt Lor'themar Theron's hand on her bare shoulder, and she turned to him. He was asking her questions, what was wrong? What had happened? She covered his mouth with hers and silenced him.

She was gone in the morning, utterly, as if she had never been there, as if he had never held her there at all.

(8.)

The Subterranean lab was dark, twisting and deep, her memories of the place chilled her to the bone. Silence had descended upon the place, and she could hear nothing, not even the musings of Ghosts.

She placed her steps carefully, not wanting to disturb the dead.

Rhys resisted every twitching impulse to flee as she approached the green cistern that held whatever was left of Beatrice, if it could even be called Beatrice anymore.

The face was smooth, like her own, eyes closed as if she was nothing more than sleeping .

"_You must destroy her," _Mathias urged, appearing from somewhere deeper, darker. "_If you don't she will keep dreaming and dreaming into something terrible." _

"I can't." Rhys did not take her eyes off of her, this stranger that looked so much like her. Charmed and strange, she brushed her fingers against the glass, trying to touch that form.

Beatrice's eyes flew open instantly, completely white and vacant, seeing but not seeing. Paralyzed, Rhys was unable to move, but watched in a morbid fascination.

Her mouth opened in a silent scream. In death, her gums had receded; her teeth appearing sharper, longer. Small fractures appeared in the glass cistern that spread and cracked.

Rhys found herself stepping backwards automatically, her face a mask that betrayed no emotion. She watched in morbid fascination as the verdigris solution burst through the glass and spilled to the floor, and Beatrice with it. She came out in a deranged mess of limbs, stitches and skin. Beatrice lie there, gurgling and heaving.

"Pa..m…e…la." It heaved, a substance of a colour Rhys could not name was dripping from the corners of it's mouth. It reached out a hand, a reticulated, gnarled form of a hand, gleaming against the solution that coated it. She slammed it against the cold, hard floor, and pushed herself forward, unable to stand.

A hideous monster, Rhys could not look away. She was no more hideous than she was. Beatrice tilted her head upwards and let out a scream so vociferous Rhys recoiled as if in pain, covering her hears with her hands.

It was a sound that was heard for miles and miles, that called out in misery and anguish. It was a wail that shattered glass and other cisterns, poisons, toxins and potions pouring out onto the floor.

"What must I do?" Rhys murmured to Beatrice and to no one, for Beatrice wasn't even human any more. The stitched horror was upon her, reaching and grasping. Its fingers, twitching talons secreting ooze and bile latched onto her forearm and dug deep, drawing blood.

Beatrice called out her lamentations again, and Rhys was suddenly elsewhere.

_Lost in a forest, dark and deep such as she had never seen before. The child that she had known from dreams was there, but he could not see her. The gnarled branches clawed against the dark sky, menacing and reaching, reaching for the child that may never be born. _

"_You cannot go!" Rhys called out to him, but her voice came out in the sound of nothingness and she could not speak. _

_His face obscured by the darkness, he did not turn. He walked farther into the forest, dark and deep. Rhys knew that he would not come out again, and watched, helplessly as the wood devoured him. _

Beatrice's grip on her forearm tightened as Rhys fell to the ground, anesthetized. She watched as Beatrice's waxen lips peeled back, exposing its salient teeth, elongated by her receding gums. She observed Rhys with blank, white, white eyes, something, some verdigris solution had pooled in them, staining her smooth, pallid face.

Wailing again, Beatrice lunged forward again, sinking her knifelike teeth, white as death into Rhys' shoulder, the space where it met her neck.

She tried to call out to anyone that might hear her, but could not.

Something flew at her assailant, something small, blurred and pink.

"I'll kneecap ya!" Links Tinkgrinder let out a fierce yell. In a clean swipe, Beatrice's head was severed from her body, and rolled to the floor.

Still moving and twitching, Beatrice's body lashed out, swiping at nothing, lolling about helplessly in a pool of green sludge.

Links lunged at the metal cylinder beside the cistern Beatrice had emerged from, ramming against it with all her strength as it fell, crushing what was left of Beatrice beneath it.

An arm extended out from where it had fallen, it clawed against the ground for only a moment before it stopped moving, leaving the subterranean prison silent again.

"What happened to you?" Links was at Rhys' side in an instant, peeling back the folds of armor and clothing to inspect the mark left behind by the kiss of Beatrice.

"Toxin…" Rhys heaved, barely able to even speak.

Links looked away from the wound, face contorted in repulsion at the smell of it before she looked back. "I'm going to get you out of here." She assured her.

Dizzy and tired, Rhys felt her eyes begin to close.


	7. Knives

Chalk Hills

07. Knives

* * *

(1.)

When she awoke, Rhys was someplace warmer, softer. The druid, Gracina, was trying to make her drink something.

"You are awake," Gracina spoke softly. "They've managed to neutralize the neurotoxin, and the wound was stitched closed, it should not leave much of a scar."

Laboring a little, Rhys sat up. "Where is Links?" She asked, one hand reaching for the bandage at her shoulder, concealing the mark left by the kiss of Beatrice.

"She is safe."

"Good."

"Why did you go back to that place alone?" Gracina, for all her timeless wisdom, could not understand her new ally.

"I don't know." Rhys looked away, as if she was trying to remember herself. "I don't understand it, either. How is it that the mind becomes so fragile, so malleable? It is as if will is an illusion."

With a suspicious glance, Gracina reached to touch her forehead lightly. "The fever has passed." She said after a moment of contemplation, and then left the room.

Rhys tried to sleep, for they had told her she must, but she couldn't. In the dark, a familiar hand grasped hers and she clung to it.

He spoke to her in whispers, afraid that anything louder might cause her to break and shatter. He whispered words like soul; my love, my darling.

_I love him, I love him, I love him, I love him. _

(2.)

"We have begun to move our forces within the Citadel," Tirion Fordring began. "WE can have better access to the upper spire through air."

He pointed to a meticulously drawn tactical map. Lor'themar and the other rulers of the great cities looked on eagerly, but Rhys stood, expression unreadable in the back of the tent with arms folded neatly across her chest. She cared very little for strategies and war games, for she had no use for them. When battle gripped her, the change would come, and she would kill as she had killed thousands of times before. Some of these foes had been deserving. Others were not.

"In order to determine who is best suitable to face the Litch King, both King Varian Wrynn and Warcheif Thrall have agreed to hold a tournament."

Rhys scowled darkly. "…you have objections, Lady Martina?" Tirion raised an eyebrow.

"I do not like it." Lor'themar Theron spoke. "The loss of life incurred by such a tournament would be devastating to our already limited forces."

"He speaks for himself." Thrall said. "He does not like the idea of battle."

"You will not speak-" Rhys snarled at the Warcheif, furious that he would insinuate the Regent-Lord was a coward. Lor'themar held up a hand to silence her.

"It is not the battle I do not like." Lor'themar's green eye narrowed. "It is the senseless of it."

(3.)

"Five minutes and a knife." Links grinned wickedly. Rhys bristled as their opponents stepped into the coliseum, orcs and elves, trolls and tauren, the Undead she eyed curiously, for they were cursed, as she was, consumed.

Lor'themar Theron stood with them, and eyed her coldly. She wondered what it meant.

"Begin!" Highlord Tirion Fordring shouted, and Rhys reached for her knives, slicing and riving effortlessly with no real malice, like a macabre dance.

She heard the cry of Links Tinkgrinder, pinned and helpless, her disproportionately large head beneath the hoof of a Tauren.

Rhys was done dancing. She let out a screech so loud it could be heard for miles, it was the wolf that rushed to the aid of the gnome, overpowering the half-bull humanoid utterly. She bit into his neck, snipping at that crucial vein, and blood wept, coating her muzzle in a thick crimson sheen.

Sensing the need to react quickly for the sake of his ally and no other, Lor'themar threw himself at the beast, managing somehow to pin the Worgen, her back hitting the wall with such force that bits of wood shivered and snapped.

He could smell the essence of death and metallic blood on her breath and for a moment wondered what this monster, his monster, might do. He pressed the tip of his blade against her throat, with just enough force to remind the beast that it was there.

All around them, the battle raged, someone in the crowd was chanting, '_Kill the Beast, Kill the Wolf'_

He kept his gaze firmly affixed to her eyes as Rhys' bones began to shift, collapsing, her features smoothed, her skin paled. Rhys pressed her body against hers and he could feel her chilled breath against his ear.

Rhys turned her head to the side in an act of submission exposing her delicate porcelain neck, unable or unwilling to strike him. The brand he held against her stung, a single drop of blood ran down her neck, white as marble. She inhaled sharply, a gasp, a moan. He felt her tremble and press against him, the beast subdued, vulnerable, lovely.

Paralyzed with desire, he found himself unable to move, unable to act. He needed to feel her beneath him again, to taste her, to possess her.

"What's that? Up near the rafters?"

Expeditiously, but all the same reluctant, Lor'themar Theron disentangled himself, pressing his back against her as if the barbarous creature was in need of his protection.

"What is it? What has happened?" He felt her breath against the back of his neck, the thin hairs there bristled and stood on end.

The Black Knight stood before them, the fighting quelled. All gaze was fixed on the dark figure, terrified yet violent and awed.

"Did you think an agent of the Litch King would be bested by your pathetic little tournament?"

He felt Rhys' algid palms on his forearm, urging him to step aside, but he would not move.

"I've come to finish my task." The Black Knight's deep voice echoed against the walls of the coliseum, the hollowed eye sockets fixed on the Regent-Lord, no, beyond him- Rhys.

"Let me go." She whispered. "You endanger yourself."

_You know what needs to be done… _The voice of Mathias Lehner, strange and sad, echoed in her mind. _He is lost… like Beatrice, like the others._

The menacing skeletal figure swung at the warrior closest to him, cutting the human down. He dropped to his knees, his torso slid away from the rest of his body, having been neatly abscinded, the blood hemorrhaging and pooling against the wood and gravel.

Rhys pushed past Lor'themar sprinting, shifting as she rushed forward before he could reach for her and wrench her back to him where she might be safe.

"RED…PATH." Teeth bared and snarling, she grated, unable to speak. Her lupine claws clenched the knights forearm, effectively preventing him from aggressing again. Wrapping her reticulated talons tighter, the bone fractured and splintered.

"This farce ends here."

He swung but the worgen avoided the blow deftly, releasing a growl with eyes glaring bright and crimson.

"KILL HIM." King Varian Wrynn bellowed, urging the others to action.

The Black Knight struck once more with such force she was hurled backwards, hitting the wall and crumbling with a startled yelp, dust rising from the ground, her claws grasping at the dirt beneath her. A young woman in the crowd let out a scream.

Others lunged at him desperately, with arcing high swings but the knight ignored them, rushing at the beast, his quarry.

Lor'themar struck him with his blade in an attempt to defend her, his monster, his lover. Skeletal fingers wound themselves around his neck and tightened.

A sound erupted from the worgen, an enraged low growl as her massive jaws encased the knights forearm and closed with a sickening crunch, neatly separating the bone from the rest of the semblance of a body.

Lor'themar fell back, gasping for air, but the worgen did not notice, grasping at the skull of the Black Knight and twisting. A vertebrae popped from the back of his neck and splintered, the undead sinking to his knees. The beast forced it to coil again, ripping, severing. The head removed from the body, the remains of the Black Knight fell, twitching, then eventually motionless.

"_Verily… verily… I say unto you…. Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground… and die…_" The skull spoke in a low voice, and then was silent.

The crowd watched as the worgen, heaving with the labor of the kill threw the skull away with such force that it shattered. The crowd began to cheer, their roar growing louder.

` Lor'themar felt a talon brush against his face, the scar that crossed his blind eye, and felt it change into the cool, planate fingers of Rhys.

Still breathing heavily, she wound his arm across her shoulders and pulled him to his feet. The applause grew, but Rhys could not hear them, her ears still pounding from the battle.

_It abideth alone._

She brought him to the Elves of Silvermoon, who frowned at her but looked upon their Regent-Lord with pride.

"Thank you." A blood elf, a woman, spoke to her, with wide, brilliant green eyes. "_Lady_ Martina." She spoke words of gratitude, but they were laced with bitterness.

(4.)

"Rhys," Lor'themar was not surprised upon returning to his chambers at night and finding her sitting there, on the bed she had shared with him. She had cleaned herself, her face no longer covered in red and the musk of blood had gone.

"I am sorry," Rhys did not look at him, her eyes glassy with salt tears, but she did not cry. "And you were so worried about protecting me." She rose and turned to him, reaching to touch him again, but stayed her hand, resisting. She bit her lip and looked away from him as if ashamed.

"Don't." He reached for her, as she turned to leave. "I want you, nothing else." She was stiff, rigid, but quickly collapsed against him, allowing him control over her. "Don't ever apologize, not to me." He forced her to look at him, Lor'themar Theron, blind in one eye, unwilling or unable to let her leave.

Curiously she allowed herself to be pulled towards him, allowed him to hold her, the beast within her quelled, as it had been before, by him, only him.

They fell, her legs wound around him, clothes undone. He kissed her salty-sweet mouth, losing himself, utterly.

She thrashed beneath him; hot, lusty, her fingertips still cool as they pressed into his bare back. He wondered at her, overcome with avarice and possessiveness; other women he had known, but she had loved none but him. Rhys would always belong to him, his beautiful bête noire.

"Don't stop," She spoke in a pleading whisper at his ear.

He could deny her nothing, she asked for so little of him; perhaps because there was not so very much he could give. He kissed her rapaciously as he pushed against her, his lips brushed past the place at her neck where his blade had cut, and a breathy sound escaped her.


	8. The Half Killed

Chalk Hills

8. The Half-Killed

* * *

(1.)

There was a sound like a sigh at her ear. It was late, too late, but she could not bring herself to move, to leave. In his embrace, she did not feel the need to be aware, awake. He could keep her there as long as she could last, if only, if only.

He stirred, moving slowly, languorously, and kissed her hair, breathing in deeply. She hadn't meant to stay.

"Let me go," She breathed. "It's late."

Slowly he released her, his arms unwound and suddenly she felt cold.

(2.)

Rhys the Insane stood on the deck of the Skybreaker, gripping the rail and watched the Airship carried them towards the pale spire.

"Are you afraid?" Links Tinkgrinder asked.

A low growl sounded in her throat, the hairs at the back of her neck bristled and stood on end. The smell of death was thick on the wind, a warning.

"_Men… women… children… none were spared the master's wrath. Your death will be no different." _

"_This is not our final rest…_"

Rhys covered her ears in response to the voices echoing from the spire, but still she heard them.

"We are under attack!" Muradin Bronzebeards' voice echoed out, deafening the others to all other sounds. Ogrim's hammer emerged from the mist as they approached the spire.

A cannonball hurled towards the deck, Rhys leapt from it's path, managing to grab Links and pull her away.

"Get a mage out here to shut down those cannons!" The Orc general Saurfang bellowed.

The blood elf rushed across the deck of the Enemy ship, and at once began channeling, stilling the cannons of the Skybreaker.

"Rhys! " Links urged, her voice high pitched and frantic as their own soldiers launched themselves onto the enemy's ship to quiet the mages chanting.

There were many battle-mages aboard that ship, of this there was no doubt, killing one would only prolong the battle. Links called to her again, but Rhys didn't seem to hear, running beneath the deck of the airship.

(3.)

"We need more steam!" The Goblin Engineer bellowed, his voice barely audible over the sound of the roaring cannons on the deck above.

There was a sound, barely audible above the sound of gunfire. A rap, tap, tapping.

The thick wood of the side wall caved, and a human-wolf monster burst through . The nearest engineer did not have enough time to cry out a warning, as he was quickly seized, spewing blood and organs, thrown out into the frosty atmosphere.

The wolf did not wait for the others to react. It charged, snarling and howling, crunching bones and metal.

"We've done it! We've won!"

Ogrim's Hammer drifted away, sinking low in a cloud of thick black smoke. Links Tinkgrinder coughed.

The hull of the enemy ship burst, and a pale form thrown from it among the smoke and cinders, her hands raised to hide her face, smeared with blood.

"Rhys!" Links called out, extending her hand as far as she could reach.

She caught hold of her, Rhys hitting the side of the side of the ship with such force she cried out in pain.

Link's face flustered and reddened, exerting all of her strength to keep her from falling down to the gorge of bones and ice below.

She felt Rhys' hand slipping from her.

Avenger Metz was at her side in an instant, latching onto the girl and dragging her, alive and breathing to the deck of the ship.

"Thank you." Rhys nodded, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she lie against the wooden boards, looking towards the sky.

"Are you all right?" Links breathed.

Rhys did not speak, but managed a twisted smile.

(4.)

The letter spread before him was of a personal nature, advising him to find a wife, children, when he returned to Silvermoon. Slowly with great care, he reached for a candle, and set fire to the edges of the parchment, watching as it burned.

"What is it?" Warcheif Thrall demanded of a Sunreaver scout that had just burst into the pavilion.

"Ogrim's Hammer has sustained significant damage." The scout informed them, breathless and tired. "it will take some time to repair."

The regent lord cursed, slamming his fist down on the table.

"Casualties?" Thrall stood.

"Very few, other than the engineers. Most managed to escape."

"What happened?" Lor'themar's jaw was clenched tightly, his voice trembling with rage.

"The engine room… something happened down there. Something got in."

Lor'themar Theron's remaining eye widened, and he stood abruptly, turning his back.

She had gone. She had gone to the Citadel, and would surely die there.

"I must reach the Kor'kron forces stationed at the upper spire." He stated, turning around suddenly.

"Understood."

(5.)

The Ashen Verdict had already established themselves at the upper spire.

Rhys stood away from the others, watching, waiting.

"Your soul is heavy. So heavy it makes the air around you silent."

Rhys turned quickly.

"Who are you?" She growled.

"I am Ormus." The man's gaze was fixed intently upon her, unwavering, but unseeing.

"You are blind." She stated, her fists clenching automatically.

"A self-inflicted wound, my friend." Ormus turned back to his work, hunched over his anvil, the metal beneath his hands red and burning.

"Why?"

"I have seen many, many things. Things so great and terrible I did not wish to see anything ever again." Ormus paused. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Ormus raised his head again. "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."

"Yes."

"I must speak with the Lady Martina." A voice, too familiar, requested.

Rhys turned her head.

"After what you're people have done!" Muradin Bronzebeard bellowed. "Leave or I will kill you where you stand!"

"I will speak with him." Rhys appeared.

Lor'themar Theron turned and walked beside her.

"You should not have come." She whispered, her voice grave, as soon as they were out of earshot. His fingers had wound around hers, carefully, afraid of being seen.

"Come with me." He pleaded. "This place is death and it cannot have you."

"I cannot go." Rhys gripped his hand tightly.

"Then I will remain here."

"No!" Rhys protested loudly. He pulled her into the shadow of the spire, out of sight from the others.

"Shh," He whispered. "You draw attention to yourself."

"No," she trembled, brushing her fingertips against his face, the Theron family crest he had given her caught the light of the setting winter sun.

"I am offering the assistance of the Kor'Kron Vanguard." Lor'themar studied her face carefully. there had been something she wanted to tell him, he could see it. "Let me help you."

"You should not have come." she spoke in whispers now, somehow his arms had become tangled about her, her face pressed against his neck. He should have been worried, fearful, if they were discovered like this, embracing as if they were lovers.

"A lone Orc against the might of the alliance!" Muradin Bronzebeard's booming voice tore them apart .

"Every Horde soldier that you killed - for every Alliance dog that fell, the Litch King's armies grew. Even now the val'kyr work to raise your fallen as Scourge." Dranosh Saurfang no longer, it was someone half-killed that Lor'themar Theron did not know.

Rhys and Lor'themar had reached them now, the Kor'Kron vanguard forming behind them.

"My boy died at the Wrathgate." High Overlord Saurfang spoke evenly. "I am here only to collect his body."

"Charge!" Muradin Bronzebeard bellowed.

The ground beneath them shook as Rhys lunged at him, eyes glowing red as blood with snapping jaws.

The other soldiers that approached the Deathbringer fell swiftly, as if a curious plague had gripped them, blood streaming from every orifice.

Lor'themar found himself unable to move, gasping for air as if some unknown force had wrapped itself around his neck and was crushing him.

The Deathbringers sword ran itself across the worgens chest, but the cut was not deep and she lunged again, a claw puncturing the chest of her foe, grasping and twisting. The Half-Killed sank to his knees and the worgen retracted, pulling with it the heart of her enemy, still and silent.

The Deathbringer fell, his eyes firmly open, but dull and lifeless.

Lor'themar Theron gasped for air.

High Overlord Saurfang stood, and approached the worgen, now human girl.

"Don't force me hand, I can't let ye pass." Muradin Bronzebeard almost sounded regretful.

"Behind you lies the body of my only son. Nothing will keep me from him."

Muradin lowered his head, and stepped aside.

The world was silent as High Overlord Saurfang placed a rough hand on Rhys' shoulder. "Thank you." He said, then knelt and gathered what remained of his son in his arms.

_Trk'hsk…_

"Trk'hsk" Rhys said suddenly.

Saurfang bowed his head and left her, returning to his soldiers.

Lor'themar took a step forward to follow Rhys as she gazed into the abyss of the Spire.

"You must go with them." High Overlord Saurfang advised him. "The Litch King must fall."

(5.)

The saturnine citadel was filled with a distinct absence of sound, a malaise, foreboding and disquiet. He spoke to her, but she did not hear him.

_But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death._

It was Lor'themar that pulled her back to him suddenly, away from the wall of blue flames that appeared. He held her too long, too tightly, her arms wound around his back until the flames had dissipated, earning suspicious glances from those around them.

"There are traps." He removed himself away from her quickly, his remaining eye hardened into a glare.

_Burn it to the ground…_

"The others, they must go." Rhys turned to Links, speaking in whispers.

"Are you daft?" Links squeaked.

"I will go alone."

"You'll be killed!" Links glanced at their companions and turned to Rhys again, lowering her voice. "You are very strong, but he is stronger."


	9. Seeping Red

(1.)

"Val'kyr!" a nameless soldier cried out.

In his rush to battle, a blinding light engulfed him, leaving Regent Lord Theron unsure of the difference between the imaginary and the real. Forms, faces, known and unknown appeared before him, and he was elsewhere.

_The room echoed with a child's cry when Lor'themar Theron entered._

"_What's the matter?" He bent to reach for this boy, half-elven, half-human. The child turned and pointed, there on the bed draped in crimson silk and shrouded with a red veil lie the form of a pale, dark-haired, dark eyed woman. A thin, even line ran across her throat, seeping red. _

Cool, familiar hands pulled him from this apparition then vanished as quickly as they had come. The Val'kyr lie dead, it's illusions dissipated.

"Where is she?" Links Tinkgrinder was the first to speak. "Where is Rhys?"

"There is no time, " Avenger Metz spoke to Links. "The Lich King must fall."

He was met with a glare.

"The frozen throne is within reach." Muradin Bronzebeard spoke. "We must press on."

(2.)

… _the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death…._

The citadel was cool and quiet, but somewhere, a fire burned. Rhys walked through the shadows, searching, listening.

She passed the animated abominations, stitched horrors of things that were once living, into the deeper recesses of the citadel. It would be foolish and impossible to defeat the Litch King alone, but it would also be foolish and impossible for an army.

A door, tightly closed and frozen in place barred her path.

"I don't have time for this." Rhys muttered, removing from her belt a pistol, firing three precise shots causing the frozen padlock to shatter and crumble away.

A swift kick forced the door open and she burst through it, her form rapidly shifting to worgen as she lunged at the skeletal jailer, tearing and splintering him apart until he fell, dead as dust, to the cool floor.

One prisoner, shackled to the wall, not dead and not alive, burning with a fire screamed as if in pain. The flames leapt at her and Rhys shielded her face with her now human hands, until it subsided.

"Bolvar." Rhys spoke the name with pity, knowing what was to be his fate.

"Agent Anvilmar. What has become of the Alliance?"

"Nothing yet," she worked quickly to remove the shackles that bound him. "But they will face him, and they will lose."

"Then …." His voice was grating. "We… must…. go."

(3.)

The air was biting, cold and frigid, like that none of them had experienced before. They stood back as Tirion Fordring approached the depraved King of nothingness, steeled by rage alone and the absence of fear.

"So...the Light's vaunted justice has finally arrived. Shall I lay down Frostmourne and throw myself at your mercy, Fordring?"

"We will grant you a swift death, Arthas. More than can be said for the thousands you've tortured and slain."

"You will learn of that first hand. When my work is complete, you will beg for mercy - and I will deny you. Your anguished cries will be testament to my unbridled power." He stood and descended, slouching, lumbering. He extended his hand and the ice responded instantly, encasing the Highlord within. "I'll keep you alive to witness the end, Fordring. I would not want the Light's greatest champion to miss seeing this wretched world remade in my image."

He rushed at them, the startled small army, swinging his blade with deadly precision.

A howl pierced the air and all became silent. The worgen leapt, farther faster, disappearing and engulfed by the sword that had consumed souls.

In that moment, it was either a demon or a saint that barreled forward in a flurry of flames, rendering the mighty king immobile.

_The fog was thick in this purgatory, filled with thousands of sick, sad voices. Rhys had only come looking for one. _

_Time did not slouch forward here. _

"_You have come here," It was Mathias Lehner that spoke, the ghost of what Prince Arthas once was, trapped like so many others. He held the hand of the King, Terenas Menethil, his father. _

_Rhys' fingers wrapped around the hilt of the dagger at her side. "I cannot do this." _

"_But you must." Matthias released the hand he held and took a step forward. "You should not have come. We tried to warn you." _

_With an unsteady grip, Rhys drew the dagger, leveling it at the ghost child. _

"_Strike now!" A nameless, faceless spirit pleaded._

_With a fierce yell she lunged, the blade piercing the ethereal shell. _

"_I am no more, you have killed me." The child spoke. _

_The blade forgotten, she reached for him as he fell, lowering him gently to the ground. Rhys thought she tasted salt on her lips. _

"_Goodbye," Matthias Lehner smiled faintly. _

She was thrown from the sword to find what remained of Bolvar Fordragon triumphant, the ghost of the old King, Terenas Menethil standing beside his son.

Rhys glanced, curiously, at the blood on her hands.

_Without its master's command… _The king spoke to her.

"Without its master's command, the restless Scourge will become an even greater threat to this world." Rhys spoke for him, the words of the dead falling on deaf ears, gingerly taking the crown, so cold in her hands it burned. "There must always be a Lich King." She paused, and turned to Bolvar. "He that hate his life in this world shall keep it."

"No, this burden is mine." Tirion Fordring protested.

"Let me be the jailer of the damned." Bolvar's spoke in a caustic tone. "Tell them that Arthas Menethil is dead, and Bolvar Fordragon died with him."

The crown was taken from her, and she stepped away as Bolvar took his place on the throne. It was something she could not watch, not after years of blood and gore and violence. The others would return and go back to what they were, all but one.

(4.)

That night, at half past eight, there was a rap-tap-tapping at Lor'themar Theron's window.

He rose from his bed and opened the window, with a slight creak.

"Rhys," His tone was inviting, but she did not move.

"Do you know why Dr. Kohler took you?" She asked in a whisper.

In the beginning, in that place. Lor'themar shuddered at the memory.

Lor'themar Theron kissed her suddenly, time had brought her here, to him, for now, and time would take her away, and bring her back again. Her question had already been forgotten as he reached for her, gathered her gently, an arm beneath her knees and another at her back. He planate form wrapped itself about him, and he felt her breath, fiore, frozen, on his skin.

(5.)

Lor'themar Theron's arm had wound around her back and draped comfortably over her bare midsection.

Languorously, she lifted her head in response and kissed his shoulder.

"What will you do?" She asked.

"There have been rumors of the end of the world." Lot'themar gazed out the open window, his fingers tracing over the tattooed lines on her skin, cool and smooth. "Cultists."

"I know," She found herself thinking of lost little Pamela and her warnings about monsters.

"Will you go with me?" he turned his head to look at her, his enemy, his lover.

"Where you go, I cannot always follow." She whispered, her voice wavering.

He awoke in the night to find Rhys still asleep, still breathing, beside him. She stirred.

"What has happened?"

"I was dreaming," They spoke in whispers. "A child,"

"You've seen him too." Rhys sat up and shivered, drawing the blanket tighter about her.

"I think he is my son."

"Yes." Rhys whispered. "waiting to be."

(6.)

"My council has informed me I must take a wife." Lor'themar Theron swallowed.

Rhys nodded, unsure of how else she should react. She knew that it could not be her that he brought to Silvermoon and declared his, she had known all along.

"It is to be the Lady Zaedana." He paused, waiting for her words, a look, a glance. "I swear to you now that she shall have no more of me than my name; no child of mine or touch the softness of glance, nor instant of desire."

Rhys stood after a moment and crossed the room towards the window, drawing from her belt a knife that she held against her chest. Her heart fluttered like something delicate and fragile beneath the gleaming blade.

In her daze she did not feel Lor'themar forcefully wrenching the blade from her hands. "Rhys, no," He pleaded.

"I would not have forgotten you." she spoke softly, shrinking from him like a wounded animal, confused and afraid.

"I do not love her." He wanted to shout, but instead spoke in a hushed tone. He stood at her back, she could feel him there, warm and assuring even now, even still. She allowed him to touch her, placing his arms across her as if she would fall through the wide, wide window. She turned to him, with salt tears that burned against his chest. Twice her fist pounded on his shoulder, an act of anguish and not malice.

"I will kill her. If I ever see her I will kill her."

"I know."

(7.)

She watched from up high, in the rafters of the specious cathedral, built to honor a spurious God.

Her perfidious lover stood like a pagan with a woman who was not her.

_Burn it to the ground._

_One, two three, she counted rosary beads. _

_He clasped that woman's hand, expression cool and distant. _

_Four, five, six, she trembled with a sad enmity. _


End file.
